"Clem? CLEMENTINE!"
Horror fills Kenny's mind as he screams in shock and kneels over her body in a heart-beat. In a second, he draws his gun out and fires blindly in the direction of the rifle that has just shot the kid, trying to distract whoever the fuck has been stalking them. As he picks Clementine up to drag her out of the line of fire, he hears a howl of pain from someone he managed to hit and then the voice of some other bastard barking orders.
They're close, and they're clearly outnumbering them.
"... Clem?" he calls, looking down at the girl in his arms while he runs away from the clearing, as fast as the vegetation allows him to. His eye falls on the child's jacket, and he can see the hole through which the bullet has exited, on the front. "C'mon, darlin'... please... please, answer me…"
Clementine's vision tries to focus, as she's brought back to reality by the tight, yet tender embrace someone's holding her into. She gasps at the sharp pain in her right side, and her sight slowly becomes less blurry, until Kenny's face comes into view. He's a mess, his skin so pale she could have mistaken him for a walker.
"K-Kenny..." she tries to say, though only a whisper escapes her lips.
His eye widens a bit. "Oh, thank God... it's alright, hon..." He slows down only to adjust her better in his arms, so he can press her injured side against his chest to stop the bleeding. "... 's just a scrape... you're gonna be fine..."
Clementine whimpers in pain at the pressure as she tries to hold her tears back, failing in the process. "... it h-hurts..."
"I know... I know, hon..." he speaks softly, looking down at the child's painful expression, while his heart is literally pounding against his rib-cage. "... it'll be alright... I promise ya-" His face goes suddenly whiter in the instant he realizes the kid's drifting off again. "Clem. Clem, look at me," he says, his voice edged with fear as he feverishly scans her pale, sweaty features. "No, no, no! Fuck! Stay with me, darlin'… you can't fuckin' leave me, Clementine!"
Driven by the desperation that's eating him, he keeps running as he's never done before, neither when he had to flee a horde of walkers after trying to save Ben, nor after Carver's camp escape. He can feel his coat and his sweater gradually getting soaked in her blood, which pours from her once blue jacket. He's not thinking straight at the moment, but he tries his best to suppress the urge to yell her name over and over, 'cause he knows he can't risk to attract the walkers. He could never handle the pain to lose her… he simply couldn't… lose her too…
"I can almost see him!" he hears yelling behind him.
Fuck! He curses, as he tries to go faster, even if his legs are starting to give in. He had hoped the dead prey he left behind would keep those bastards occupied long enough to let him go undisturbed, but he was clearly wrong.
"They may be with those robbers! Don't let 'em escape!"
What? The hell do they want from us...?
A bullet flies inches away from his head, grazing the surface of a tree nearby. He ducks behind another one, taking a moment to catch his breath, and he hears Clementine letting out a hiss of pain. The girl is still fighting to stay awake.
"Don't worry, darlin'... these fuckers can't shoot for shit..." he pants, briefly glancing down at her, before pushing himself out of their cover for another sprint across the forest. The museum couldn't be too far now, since he was sure the vegetation around them was getting sparser with each step.
As he catches the first glimpses of the wood's end, he notices the shouts behind him are slowly dying down, replaced by the sound of gunshots in the opposite direction of where he's heading, and by the growls of walkers. Finally, the undead attention has been alerted.
"We're almost there, Clem..." he breaths, while his worn out legs move almost on their own, as if they were dragged towards the museum by an invisible force. "... just hang on..."
Parker's Run appears like a vision to him and Kenny tries not to stumble on the square's stone floor as soon as he starts to cross it, while his sight - blurry from sweat and tears - sets on the main entrance of the museum up ahead of him. Two indistinct frames, which are standing on watch in front of the doors, come into view.
"Kenny, what the hell's goin' on, man-?"
"Oh, God, no! Clem!"
Kenny doesn't even spare a glance at Mike and Bonnie as he bursts inside, followed closely by the two.
"Mike, go get Luke... Nick, you take my place outside!" the woman quickly says, as she walks alongside Kenny.
The one eyed man can't hear any of the commotion going on around him, nor he can bring himself to look into Sarita's horrified eyes as he lays Clementine on one of the pallets they found in the museum, obviously owned by other survivors before them.
"Jesus, Kenny, what happened...?" says Rebecca, clearly aghast by the sight before her eyes.
"Clem, darlin'... it'll be alright... you're safe now..." it's all Kenny's rambling right now, while Bonnie starts to open the girl's jacket to see her injure.
Jesus, he's losing it... The red haired woman can hear the shock in his hoarse voice, as he holds Clementine's hand in his own bloodied ones. "Where's Luke when you need him...?"
"Hey, I'm here," Luke's voice comes from the entrance just a few seconds later, as he's followed by Jane, "I found Clem's hat and- wait, what's goin' on?"
"Go get my backpack, quickly!" Bonnie uncovers Clementine's side as much as needed to see her injure. Her stare lingers where the shot had pierced through the external part of her right side, both on her front and her back.
"She's lucky," Jane almost makes the redhead jump, "it's a clean shot." As she kneels and starts to press on Clementine's wound, Bonnie gives her a glare, unsure about her intentions. "Come on, I can help. We need to stop the bleeding."
"Okay, okay..." Bonnie tries to focus as Luke returns with her backpack. "Shit, we used most of the stuff on Sarita's arm-"
"Here, I have some peroxide I found this morning, search in my pocket," Jane quickly says, as Clementine softly moans in pain under the pressure of her hands, "we use that to disinfect on both sides. And this will help for the pain."
"Where did you get all these-?"
"Does it matter?" Jane hands her the small bottle of disinfectant. "You still have the stuff for stitches?" she urges, while Bonnie nods.
"Fuck," says Luke, alarmed by the state in which Clementine verses, "how the fuck did this happen?" His eyes find Kenny's slumped frame, his head bending between his shoulders and his broken gaze fixed on the little girl in front of him.
"Could you two give us some space, please?" Bonnie says, as she assists Jane in turning Clementine on her good side in order to tend to her back.
"Yeah, sure... sorry," Luke snaps out of his incredulity and glances again at Kenny; he then speaks up, seeing he's not moving. "Come on, Kenny-"
"I'm not goin' anywhere."
"Kenny, please..." Sarita tries to convince him, reaching for him, but he doesn't move.
"Luke, get him out of here, we need to work in peace."
"No! I am NOT gonna lose another child!" he angrily shouts, barely turning his head to face them. Grief and despair have turned his expression in a horrible mask and for a few seconds no one dares to speak.
Seeing things taking a bad turn, Mike steps in, "Kenny, you need to listen, man," he says, while grabbing him under his arms, firmly enough to make him budge. "They're gonna do their best to help her, but you need to calm down..."
"Get yer hands off me," he barks, wriggling away from him as he stands up; his furious gaze glances briefly at the people around him, before falling again on Clementine's barely breathing figure. She was still wearing his hat. "Their best ain't enough," he says, his voice lower and filled with anguish. "They have to save her."
Sarita rises on her feet and wraps her good arm around his mid, leading her wretched boyfriend away from the group, as the rest of them leave too, in order to give Bonnie and Jane their much needed space.
"I- I need a moment... alone."
As Kenny slowly frees himself from her hold, Sarita realizes she can barely recognize him anymore. He didn't look so miserable and lost even when she found him holed up in that old restaurant, after almost two weeks of starvation.
The man slides against a wall with his head in his bloodstained hands. "I failed her… I-I… fuck… I should have known… I couldn't protect her…" the woman hears him mumbling, in a confused way, and she shuts her eyes closed, before trying to reach for him again.
"Kenny..."
"Don't," he warns, pulling away from her arm. He lets out an angry sigh, before speaking: "Everythin' I touch, everythin' I love- it all ends up in pieces," he finally fixes his eye on her, considering her sorrowful expression for a few seconds, before adding: "I won't let that happen to ya, too."
To be continued...
